Features:

  • Brand new user interface that appeals to the tween market
  • 200 plus practice sessions with on trend content
  • Arcade room with 10 typing games
  • Enhanced, detailed reporting by individual key
  • Printable certificates of achievement
We love all of the options under Practice sessions!

We're loving this program! The kids typing skills are improving wonderfully! Fun games, music choice, can create progress for multiple users & disk doesn't have to be in PC to access program once you've installed it-which is a big plus for us also! Absolutely LOVE the large variety of Practice sessions!!! You or children can practice typing documents on interesting topics like History includes Bill Of Rights, U.S. Constitution, ect. Literature, includes like Huckleberry Finn, The Brothers Grimm & sooooo many more, Science includes numerous writings on Natural Science & Astronomy, topics include monkeys, bats, frogs, rain forest birds....the list goes on and on. I can see this program lasting us for years & helping our kids learn to love and excel at typing! Very very pleased with purchase & our kids are too!

Having to choose between Adult Mavis 18 and this for my 8.5 year old. and what I did and what worked from me

Having to choose a typing program for a child was a challenge as I was inclined to get Mavis Beacon since this is the program I learned to type on over a decade ago. Then after reading all reviews on the different adult and kids versions of Mavis Beacon I sort of got discouraged and went with different programs recommended by probably their sales people. I wasted tons of money, hours and they completely sucked and my child was not a bit interested. So recently I bit the bullet and decided to get Mavis after all but having an almost 9 year old I was not sure if I should go with the advise of some and just get an adult version or the kids. I decided to get both. And so I did. Here is my review of both Adult Mavis Beacon version 18 and my thoughts: 1. I was trying to install both versions myself and apparently each of them will work for Operating system: Windows 7 without a problem however you need to know that this program will need to have your monitor switched to lower resolution - which only makes sense as this is how it can work for new an old systems. 2. Once installed kids version and Adult version 18 they both worked flawlessly in the resolution 1024. 3. As soon as my child saw the Mavis for adults she immediately recognized it as the same software they have at school!!! so I was like.. okay! Yey! She was totally familiar with what to do and was able to get going as they did few lessons at school. 4. I was watching her starting with the assessment test and then proceeding to assigned lesson level. It totally sucked! I think that first mistake was to take assessment test and get to some level that was entirely inappropriate as assigned by the software. Then after watching her to struggle with having to do way more keys then the home row keys as we wanted to start from the beginning since she certainly had no proper introduction' to keyboarding at school obviously.. so she was very frustrated and discouraged right of the bed. 5. I decided that she should switched to kids version and there it was.. your home keys, your home row keys and she could spend and master them to get good solid base and gradually and gently move on from this. She was very happy to be able to do at her own pace what the software was asking her, making zero to one mistake only as opposed to previously typing slowly and with lots of mistakes so many new letters that were above and beyond the novice user. In all fairness, both programs are good. We will keep them both and when she will be done with kids one then she can switch to adult one as the adult one has super cool letter game as the ants walk in row and represent letter and child has to type that letter and if you make mistake the ant get kicks out of the marching row with a funny sound and it is really hilarious. The kids program just seems totally appropriate for a child that is just learning keyboard for the first time in their life. I personally believe that this kind of software is sort of like piano playing, if your child is not ready for somewhat repetitive and boring sessions then she he is not ready for typing. Software itself wont' make it interesting if a child is not motivated to get good at typing without looing and keyboard and will be motivated by numbers and scores. Games do not teach anything aside from little practice so ditch the hope and it is fun but not required. If a child is in the state of mind that they want to be cool and able to type like a pro and have skills that others don't or to catch up with what others do then a child won't enjoy it. The opposite is true. Once you have your kid typing and he sees his speed and his errors results, they get hooked to improve and improve and improve and before they know it they type. I see her practicing happily without being asked or told because she just want to do something others can't yet do and she know she will be able to master it fast. I think it is much more important to move slowly at first and surely then just throw so many keys at a kid as the adult version does. I also think that the other programs we tried do suck because they don't understand the concept of teaching keyboard. If you are all for games and bells and whistles, this kind of program does not exist yet and what I saw, suck as they put the bells and whistles so much that they entirely get kid confused what the kid is doing and what supposed to learn from it. I am not speaking for every parent and every child but I certainly speak for myself - a parent of a kid who is very fast learner, very curious, very ambitious, self motivated, smart, very active and has good attention span. I think that this is good for any child who is ready to type up to the child who would be ashamed to get caught using it so that makes base age of about 7/9 and could go up to possibly 12? I dont' know.. probably till that age when kids do really care more about appearance of things then actual functions.. so you be the judge and then probably get the adult, but be warned.. Again starting with an adult is really frustrating, I know that I was learning home row keys for good few days and adult one made my child to type at first seating home rows plus all the rows above!!! all the letters so what kind of learning was it? frustrating, unnecessary and not gradual building on skills. And above all for adult version, DO NOT take the intro skill test as this will throw you at some random level instead of basics. If you do.. then just reset or create new user and this time do not take test and compare.. . Still frustrating but not so fast. My advise is always to have first opinion so best if you don't know what to choose pick software that can be tried and returned if you don't manage to work with it. I wasted my 4 other kids software programs as they were completely useless but I am happy with those both Mavises as she will get to move on to Adult. It was totally worth the money comparing the convenience, the time and savings over taking actual class. Again, make sure you can return your software if it won't work for you as not all kids and software are created equal. WORKS FOR WINDOWS 7 AND ANY OLDER VERSION THAN THAT - JUST SWITCH MONITOR RESOLUTION TO 1024 AND IT LOOKS AND WORKS BEAUTIFULLY AS INTENDED.

Great product!

This is a great product. I purchased this for my son. It is great for those just learning to type or for someone who wants a refresher. Many interactive features! Great value for the cost!

Great typing tutor for kids!

My daughter is home-schooling her children. She wanted the 8 year old to start touch typing and this is perfect for her. The child loves it.

Great for learning to type

Great for learning to type. My son't school recommended that we buy this and work on it over the summer to get ready for learning to type in fourth grade.

Great typing program for homeschoolers!

We bought this for our 8-year-old son. We homeschool and were looking for a good typing program. This one is great! He really enjoys the lessons and especially the games. No doubt he will be an experienced typist in not time!

Great program! Second time using it and the kids love it!

I bought this years ago at the recommendation from a friend (who had learned on it) and it was great. My gonna-be-3rd-grader self-led daughter learned to type and had fun doing it. I somehow lost the cd (though I still had the case) so when it was time for my son to learn (he kept insisting he was happy just doing hunt and peck, but he's going into middle school, so I put my foot down and insisted he learn to touch type), I looked around again...but I just couldn't find anything better than this, so I re-purchased it. No regrets. I made a keyboard blinder out of a 12 pack soda box just like I did for his sister to block their view of the keys, and he slides it onto the keyboard of his laptop and goes to work. 20-40 minutes a day, and he loves reporting his progress (a month in he's learned all the keys and is now up to 19 wpm, adjusted). That means it's working for my gonna-be-6th grade ADD kid too. This is a great program. Highly recommend!

Great Program

I didn't have any problems downloading/installing. Have had the program for four years now for our homeschool and it works on both PC and Mac with no issues and unlimited installs. I used the old school one as a kid, and it helped me pass keyboarding class in high school, and I can still type 100+ WPM at about 95-100% accuracy, which is useful when writing college papers. My kids have improved their typing immensely since we started using this.

Excellent

We have been using Mavis since I was a child. This program taught me how to type back in the 90s. Great system of learning.

Mavis Beacon teaches the 4th generation to type

My 8 year old has been asking to learn to type for a year. I have tried several other subscription based programs, and all of them have either been too basic, pre-school and none of them taught the way I learned. Most just tell them to type words without teaching the importance of finger placement. All that did was encourage her to be a fast "hunt and peck" typer. I finally got tired of paying monthly fees for all these programs and set out to fine the way I learned, The Mavis Beacon way! I was thrilled to find this disk. My daughter begs to do her typing and by the end of the first lesson she was seeing progress. It works on a modern laptop with the newest windows software on it. (I have not tried it on my Macbook yet) The first lesson was about finger placement and doing a basic typing test. It is for children, but its not so 'kiddie' that its lame to an 8 year old. The best part is, I only paid one time and she can continue to learn until she masters the subject, then we can pass it along to her younger sister. When my mother and grandmother came over, she could not wait to show them what she had learned. I told my mom I fount Mavis Beacon, and both of them said thats how they learned too! So thank you MB for teaching the 4th generation how to type.

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